Chapter 11
Frank couldn't sit still. He hadn't stopped fidgeting since he came back from outside, which was stupid. He was so stupid. Gerard didn't have that many rules for him, so he was so fucking stupid for disobeying him on purpose. His shirt was sticking to him because of how much he had been sweating, but Frank was freezing. His goddamn teeth were chattering and that awful, ugly, crawling buzzing feeling beneath his skin was driving him insane. He was close to ripping his hair out when he heard the sound of a car door shutting outside.
Frank's chest tightened, his breath quickening with every creak of the stairs. He forced himself to sit down on the bed. Fuck, he wondered if Gerard would even let him sit on the bed once he found out. Maybe he would lock Frank in the basement again. The few days he spent there after the last time he fucked up were torture.
Smiling, Gerard entered the room, but his face fell once he saw the state that Frank was in. He rushed to kneel in front of Frank and pushed his sweat soaked hair away from his face. “What's wrong? Are you sick? What happened?”
Frank wanted to cry. Gerard looked close to tears with how worried he was about Frank. “I'm horrible.”
Gerard shook his head. “No no, Frankie, you're not.”
Poor Gerard, Frank thought. Gerard still thought he was worth keeping in his home, that he wasn't just a fuckup. When he finally found out, he'd realize his mistake and then what? Earlier, Frank was afraid of being locked in the basement again, but Gerard could do something worse than that. No one would miss Frank. If Gerard hated him enough he could just bury him in the woods around his house. And he'd be doing the world a favor. It’s not like anyone would miss him.
“Baby, you're shaking.” Gerard cooed, but Frank jumped away from him.
Unable to deal with the look of hurt on Gerard’s face, he stared at his own trembling hands. “I fucked up.” Frank swallowed even though his throat was painfully dry. “I went outside. While you were gone. I went out even though you told me not to. I don’t fucking know why I did it.”
“Frankie, look at me.”
Worrying his lip between his teeth, Frank looked up at him. And Gerard—poor Gerard—didn't look angry. If anything, he looked relieved.
“But you came back. That's good, you did so good.”
Frank couldn't fucking take it. He buried his hands in his hair as an angry sob tore its way through his throat. “It's not good!” Frank has never wanted to tear his own skin off more. “I fucked up, and you should hate me. You should be mad at me!”
Gerard climbed onto the bed and pulled Frank's hands away from him, interlocking them with his own. That only set him off more. He pulled his hands away and held them close to his chest. “You're being too fucking nice to me. I can’t take it,” the younger man growled.
“What do you mean?” Once again, Gerard looked so hurt that Frank was having a hard time meeting his gaze.
Frank didn't know how to describe the way he felt. The itchy feeling that pushed him to pick fights he couldn't win with assholes who didn't care if he made it out alive or not. The crawling feeling that made him scream until his voice gave out on stage, and thrash around until he had a new set of bruises. “I need you to hurt me, Gerard. I can’t fucking take it any—”
Gerard cut him off by slapping him across the face, and Frank was stunned into silence. Then, Gerard slapped his other cheek and Frank responded by moaning softly.
It was so fucking good, the stinging heat left by Gerard’s hands was so much better than the restless feeling that had been plaguing the younger man.
“You're forgetting your manners, Frank.”
The younger man's brain was already getting fuzzy. “Fuck—thank you.” Frank was still breathing heavily, but now it was in long deep breaths instead of short shallow ones that left him gasping for air. “More?”
Gerard chuckled and shook his head. “Ask nicely.”
“Please, more?” And Gerard rewarded him with another slap. And another. “Punch me?” The younger man asked.
Gerard chuckled again. “Not today.” He ran his fingers through Frank’s hair. “My poor baby, you’re just a painslut, aren’t you? Can’t even go a few days without me hurting you.”
Leaning into Gerard’s touch, Frank nodded. “I need it. I need you, please more.”
Gerard smiled before he leaned back and slapped Frank again, and then again on his other cheek to even it out.
“Thank you.”
Slap.
“Thank you.”
Slap.
“Fuck,” Frank moaned, reaching between them to palm himself. He was so hard that it was starting to hurt, and his head was so fuzzy that he had forgotten another one of Gerard’s rules. In response, Gerard pulled his hand away from his aching cock, ignoring his whine of protest.
“I still need to punish you, Frankie. So, You won’t get to cum now. Maybe later tonight if I feel like it, okay?”
If he feels like it. Frank wanted to roll his eyes, but instead he nodded and followed Gerard out of the bedroom on wobbly legs and into the bathroom. Frank wished that the older man would take pity on him and let him take a cold shower alone. However, Gerard insisted on bathing him as always.
“You sweat so much when you’re nervous. It’s cute.” Gerard said while massaging soap onto Frank’s skin. He was paying extra attention to Frank’s chest, forcing him to try not to moan in response to it. Gerard splayed his hand across the younger man’s stomach while his other hand lightly tugged his nipples, squeezing them between his fingers.
“Please?” Frank whimpered.
“Please what?”
Frank shook his head. He was so hard, but his fuzzy headspace was making him embarrassed, and that was only turning him on more. He pushed his chest into Gerard’s hand, but the older man chuckled instead of giving Frank what he wanted.
“You want me to play with your nipples?”
Frank nodded.
“But I’m supposed to be giving you a bath.”
“Don’t need one.”
Gerard giggled. “You were really sweaty, Frankie. You’re lucky that I like how you smell.” He emphasized that by pressing his nose to the top of Frank’s head. “My Frankie. All mine. My precious boy.” He rolled the bud of Frank’s nipple between his finger and thumb, cooing softly when Frank responded with a gasp.
Frank clutched the hand that was resting on his stomach, it was taking all his willpower not to guide Gerard’s hand lower. Just a little bit lower. So he could touch him. Frank sniffed, he didn’t realize that he had started crying. “Gerard,” he sobbed.
“Shhh, it’s okay, baby.” The older man shook his hand from Frank’s grasp so he could use both of them to play with his chest, groping and squeezing the little fat that was there before started lightly pinching his nipples. “Do you think you can cum just from this?”
Frank shook his head. His entire body was trembling with the effort it took not to finish himself off. The water around him had gone cold, but it was doing nothing to make his erection flag. He just needed Gerard to do something, anything. He just needed Gerard.
The older man hummed in response and started to press kisses to the side of Frank’s neck, gradually increasing the intensity. Nipping lightly at the sensitive skin there before soothing it with his tongue. His acts were sending little shocks of pleasure to Frank’s dick, and he was starting to believe that he could come from this alone. “More, please,” He gasped.
Gerard didn’t say anything, he began to suck marks onto the younger man’s neck, cataloging each one of Frank’s gasps and moans in his mind. Frank squirmed, heat was pooling in his gut and his skin felt like it was on fire, but Gerard showed no signs of letting up. With one particularly hard bite on his neck and the twist of his fingers around his nipples, Frank was coming.
Giggling, Gerard spoke into the quickly bruising skin. “Now, let’s actually get you cleaned up.”
*****
The coming days were easy. It was like a switch had been flipped in Frank’s brain and he was finally able to relax again. Only this time it was better than when he had to blow off steam alone. He knew where each of his bruises had come from. There was a name behind the lingering redness on his cheeks. And that name fed Frank breakfast every morning and held him while they watched old sitcoms in bed.
What Gerard had done to him wasn’t the same as getting the shit kicked out of him by some asshole in an alley, but it scratched the same itch he had. And he didn’t feel like death the same day. Eventually, Gerard had to leave for work again to do things he couldn’t do from home, and Frank was left alone again.
At least there wasn’t that ugly restless feeling under his skin. He felt sated, like a dog lying at the foot of his owner’s bed.
He was flipping through a book Gerard had on his shelves, some Chuck Palahniuk novel he hadn’t gotten around to reading yet when he heard a car door shut outside. Perking up, he left the book face down on the bed and headed down the stairs to meet Gerard. However, it wasn’t Gerard who came inside.
“Hey, Frank.” Ray said, shutting the door behind him.
“Gerard isn’t here,” Frank said unsettled. He knew Ray was Gerard’s best friend, but he found his presence unnerving.
“I know, I wanted to talk to you.” He said, gesturing with a tilt of his head towards the couch.
Frank hesitated for a moment, but he sat down next to Ray. He could tell the other man was looking at him, eyeing the lingering bruises littering his neck, the burgundy collar that acted as the centerpiece of it all. “Take a fucking picture.”
Ray averted his gaze, choosing to look at a poster on the wall instead. “Sorry, it’s just that—that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Ray fidgeted with his hands. “Gerard’s really important to me, okay? And I get worried about him sometimes. Especially when he dates anyone because his last boyfriend was so…”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” Frank didn’t know what Gerard was. The small voice in his head reminded him that Gerard was his captor, he had ruined his already shitty life, and had trapped him in a situation where Frank would surely die without him. But Gerard was sweet and he loved him. And he knew how to take care of Frank better than Frank could alone. Frank would probably be dead without Gerard anyway, from alcohol poisoning or a fight he didn’t win or from his depression finally consuming him and he simply decided to stop getting out of bed one day, to stop doing anything. So despite everything, Frank was grateful for Gerard.
Ray didn’t seem to get that from Frank’s statement. “Um, I know,” he said, hiding behind his hair, his face turning red.
Ray was kind of a big guy. He was at least half a foot taller than Frank, maybe more. He had huge hands and broad shoulders, but he also had this high voice and a sort of nervous, dorky energy about him. It made it hard for Frank to be mad at him.
“That’s what I wanted to ask you about,” Ray murmured. “I just want to understand, and Gerard can be kinda cagey about these things. I mean, the guy loves oversharing, but then he’ll do shit like this and have a secret live-in boyfriend for over a month.”
“What do you want to know?” Frank said shortly, not entirely trusting Ray despite his likeable demeanor.
“What do you get out of it?”
Frank blinked. “Gerard takes care of me.”
Ray nodded, urging Frank to speak more.
“It’s not just a sex thing between us. It’s deeper. Gerard owns me because I need it.”
“You need it?”
Frank huffed out a laugh even though nothing was funny. “Yeah, I was a wreck before him. I had a shitty job and a shitty boss, and I swear there was mold in my apartment. And I was miserable because there was no one to take care of me like Gerard does. I would get into fights at least once a week behind bars. And on the nights that I didn’t, I would drink myself to sleep.”
“Does—does he hurt you?”
Frank giggled, his own face turning red. “Yeah,” he says almost breathlessly. “He does. I didn’t know if I liked it at first, but now I—yeah. He hurts me.”
“And that makes you happy?”
“Yeah. I think we make each other happy. I hope I make him happy,” because Frank would be nothing without him. “It was really bad before he took me, I think I’m only realizing that now.”
Ray was nodding along until then. “What do you mean?”
“I told you, the drinking, the fights—”
“No, you said ‘before he took me.’”
Frank’s body went cold. “Yeah,” he tried to play it off. “Y’know when he fucked me for the first time? Girls always say shit like that. I guess I’ve been watching too many soap operas, like, daytime television?”
His eyes wide, Ray shook his head. “I don’t think that’s what you meant.”
“Well, it is. Anyway, I know Gerard is your friend, but I don’t know if he appreciates you being here while he’s gone.” Frank stood up and walked towards the front door.
“Frank? I’m sorry,” Ray walked towards him. “I just wanted to talk to you.”
“I don’t feel like talking right now.”
“If something is going on, you can tell me, okay?”
“I don’t want to tell you anything, now get out.” Frank snarled.
Ray looked nervously between Frank and the door. “Fine, just—this isn’t over, okay? If Gerard cares about you, then I have to care about you too.
“Get out.”
Ray shook his head, but he followed Frank’s order’s anyway and left.
Frank pressed his back to the locked door, his hands creeping into his hair. He was so fucked.